Latest / The German Innovators Podcast – Breaking Barriers, Building the Future / #05 Collaboration & gamification in the Middle Kingdom

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#05 Collaboration & gamification in the Middle Kingdom · The German Innovators Podcast – Breaking Barriers, Building the Future

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The German Innovators in China Podcast, we empower you to stay
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tuned with Chinese innovation. Welcome back everyone and thanks
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for joining me for today's podcast episode.
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This time at the pleasure to speak with Jason Aldean,
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cofounder of the Startup, CFO, AI and a fellow friend from the
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organizing committee of Jin. Jason is Canadian, was born and
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raised in Trinidad and Tobago, today lives in Shanghai and is
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one of the most passionate people about collaboration that
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I know. We spoke about how collaboration
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and reimagination can change the way we think and how big we
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imagine the scale of our businesses.
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Jason further described how gamification, which is deeply
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rooted in the Chinese innovation culture, helps innovators think
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more broadly and helps them develop more disruptive
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solutions. I definitely gained a lot new
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food for thought from my conversation with this
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cosmopolitan innovator, and I invite you to join me for this
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interesting journey that's tuned straight in.
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I come from a background where imagining, collaborating or
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imagining people are equal. I mean their inputs can be
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equally valuable. As a child I living in a small
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country and Trinidad and Tobago I.
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To to just be in that situation, to be positive, it's important
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to imagine because the the country, you know, it's like a
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relatively small footprint in the universe of the Earth.
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So imagining bigger is a practice that I had always done
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and then turned on Tobago, and in general is a cosmopolitan
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country, so meeting different people from different
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backgrounds and ethnic groups. So at one point I had a staff
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that asked me to do a Harvard Business survey or a test that
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tests whether you'd think in a neutral way.
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So if I had ethnic bias, or if I had any type of background,
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heuristic biases and that test proved to be neutral.
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So Jason is a person with almost no biases and has therefore
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always approached collaborations very openly without judging
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upfront how useful a connection could potentially be.
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In my view, this is something that we often do in the West,
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handpicking contacts and filtering them down before even
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knowing about the expertise and story.
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So I was impressed to learn how different Jason is in this
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respect, and According to him, that was the key.
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That opened up more opportunities of bigger scope
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than Jason had ever imagined. In our own startup journey, we
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realized that we didn't have enough capabilities on our own.
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Therefore, our only routes would be to collaborate with other
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capabilities to expand the reach and to to get to a product size
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or product space that would actually become an innovation.
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And so we we we started to build that and I thought we we thought
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that our goal would be to take the data imports and put it
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through, let's now call it a Western design thinking
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approach, you know look at things from that lens of.
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Customer first, you know, empathy, humility, define the
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problem and go through the steps of ideation and and build and
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then test. So we were doing that in a very
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active way. And so I started a online meet
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up group and we shared that with the Chinese community and
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eventually that became the, you know, hive experience.
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And you know, we we were already imagining, like when we met
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certain people, we would propose that there's something we can.
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Connect together to open a new door.
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And so this embodiment, the mindset then the embodiment into
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a game format was a little bit of a natural thing.
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So the idea of creating the innovation game Hive Innovation
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was born and along with it Jason started building a China based
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hit international and heterogeneous community of like
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minded people with diverse backgrounds early on.
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So the first two occasions where we played the game, we actually.
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Had imagined first a Monopoly type game board.
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Use that as an image in your mind.
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Each of the the cards on the game board would be someone in
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the room like an entrepreneur in the room or you know starter
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founder or could be a corporate executive.
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They would put their capability or describe their capability on
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a game board card. So they would say, oh, I'm from
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HSBC, you know, part of the Fintech group and I, you know,
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our division builds. Financial planning, digital
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tools and someone else from let's say Huawei, they would say
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that I'm whatever VP of such and such and we particularly do this
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type of mobile phone or we have a database solution for such and
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such. So each person would contribute,
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but actually even new insights just listening to their
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expertise and we put it onto a common platform.
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In a common format of describing each person's capability and
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then go around the game board. Once the game board was set to
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ask people to imagine how elements would combine if we
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wanted to solve a big problem and where big was defined as a
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social social purpose problem. Or at least it had some you
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know, potential to be powerful for society, not just a profit
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making commercial venture, but. Profit making and social.
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So to give you an image to relate to, because I had the
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pleasure to play the game myself before, imagine this.
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There's a room full of people of different backgrounds in the
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beginning. These people introduce
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themselves in a short pitch and then write the key points about
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the expertise and what they can contribute on a card.
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And together with the whole group, the players choose
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societal or social problems or it could even be any business
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challenges that some of the players have.
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During the game. The participants start to
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imagine together how they, with their unique combination of
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mindsets and skills, could solve this particular problem, and at
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the end they pitch their solutions to the whole audience.
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The participants together choose which pitch they like most and
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who the winner is. So if you have three challenges,
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you have three groups, respectively 3 pitches and one
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of these three will win. When I played the game, I
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experienced that even partners that you thought were far out of
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your scope of interest can help you develop amazingly innovative
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solutions because they help you, opening up your mind to a
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broader set of opportunities. So we had the format where they
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would have to describe the problem that they're tackling
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from from that aspect of why like why is this big enough, why
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would this even, why would it even matter?
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And then the second one, second description would be the
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combination that they have in mind.
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So which of the two or three capable company groups or
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technologies would come together?
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And why would that be, for example, you know, an
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alternative, why would it actually be unique?
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And then thirdly can roughly describe how it would succeed as
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a business or sustain its commercial viability.
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So we did that type of joint imagination in this sort of
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collective room of thought, and then as people described their
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view. The interesting component was to
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hear the cross pollination like Oh yeah, that was an interesting
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comment that you made such and such and someone might add onto
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that. So I like that combination.
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And what if we added this extra thing, So expanding, we had done
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many of these, maybe mostly at my actually at my apartment in
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Shanghai and the energy in the room was very interesting.
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And the collaboration was very human, Like, if you see it, you
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would understand it as a human, but it would be hard for you to
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describe what you're feeling other than it's like it feels
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great. So while they had first used the
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game to imagine how global challenges could be solved,
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Jason and his friends ended up using the game for rapidly
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prototyping solutions for their own businesses.
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And among them also Jason, Startup, CFO, AI.
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They as founders together with their friends thought through
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and reimagined even broader and more comprehensive solutions and
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that would ultimately take their mission and vision to the next
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level. They opened up their minds early
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on, started building bigger business from the start.
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And of course, they didn't stop there.
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They kept playing the game and constantly reimagined the scope
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of their businesses to further improve.
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Let's hear what this meant for the journey of CFO AI.
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And then, so CFAI is an interesting journey because I
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began the journey within a small team within Canada and it got
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its spark from a Norwegian gentleman who is Taiwanese
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Californian, who married into a Norwegian family.
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And then I I got connected to him because he had agreed to
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come to Guangzhou. To meet with some startup
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opportunities or VC opportunities, so other startups
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in the Guangdong area and so I had arrived in in Hong Kong and
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then I took a call and I remember the call.
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He was excited to finally meet up and we we could imagine
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putting this AI into some of his restaurants and he has this
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large network at the time of a few 100F and B locations.
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And he was concerned that the financial management inside of
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these organizations were of course weak because they're not
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trained at financial management. So we started this work to
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create the Chief Financial Officer AI.
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So again there was a collaboration at a space where
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first the collaboration was two like minded people from very
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disparate parts of the world but with the like mindedness for.
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Undersigned, the digital and data-driven strategies could
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improve, you know, the livelihood and then hopefully
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improve the commercial success of these people.
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With his open mindset and passion for collaboration, Jason
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had found the multinational and heterogeneous core team of
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CFOAI, which was integrated into an international and Chinese
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environment at the same time, and he started to build the
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startup from there. So now coming to the most recent
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time of my journey, November, so just seven months ago we met
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this interesting P/E. So the private equity firm, he
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had seen us play the game, the innovation game as well because
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he we all share the same business lounge.
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So it was interesting, but he never talked to me before.
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Once we started to have more serious discussions of this
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divergent thinking using actorial science in a more
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innovative way, designing AI in different communities.
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He got very excited. So it was a very good proof of
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collaboration is this expansive exponential opportunity.
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But you need to project out this positive energy about your
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thinking, right? So like how were we thinking
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about collaborating within our own knowledge space.
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So of course I knew some stuff of what could be other
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monetization pathways, but once he and his group, which is of
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course a lot lot bigger, being a private equity firm.
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They started to apply the same type of thinking.
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They realized that wow, this is going to be a lot bigger than
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any of us could imagine. And so we actually spent seven
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months thinking about it. And ultimately it became like a
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in January we did a 7 hour pitch to this chairman.
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So you know, if you ever imagine doing pitches, if you get the
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choice to do only one pitch in your entire life, and it's.
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It's seven hours. That's actually better than
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doing 14 pitches that are 1330 minutes.
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So the reason why that is, is because you know there was so
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much depth and detail in our prior discussions when we got
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into the pitch. Then we started to diverge into
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these details of monetization and strategies and which
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collaborations could open up. Which other opportunities so
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that there was this interesting decision tree of thoughts that
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maybe our goal was initially A2 hour meeting, but it, you know,
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it quickly morphed into yeah, this exponential space of
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imagination. And what was interesting and
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what came out of it was this new thinking in my mind which was I
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had thought 1 + 1 is 11 and what I realized is that the zero to
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1. Mind space or the one to 100
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thinking is itself a limitation. Jason uses a business analogy
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here where 2 smart people meet, combine the ideas and thoughts
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and with that create something bigger than just the combination
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of the two. So by combining the ideas, they
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accelerate and elevate the business and lift it to a higher
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level. Now this is something that Jason
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had experienced early on, but with this private equity firm
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and with what Jason had experienced in China.
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He also learned that if you really push the limits and take
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the time to meet in person, discuss and challenge each
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other, and discuss for hours if necessary to develop a
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comprehensive and exhaustive strategy for your business, 1 +
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1 might even go beyond equaling 11 and reach dimensions that you
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would never have deemed possible.
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We have our own limits of how we imagine big.
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And it's not until someone together with you discovers
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something bigger that you will truly understand your
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limitation. So we can all think that we are
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already we are already pushing the boundary.
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Like, you know, wow, we're a startup of 20 people.
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Like, we're we're doing such great things if someone else
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comes along and with deep thinking.
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So the particular P chairman is a PhD in mathematics and PhD in
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psychology. So he he couldn't he can
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intellectually imagine the bigger with me, which was quite
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exciting. So what turned out in that
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imagination, I realized I wasn't actually thinking big enough,
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even though I had practiced this, you know, the design
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thinking methodology and always think big.
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And like, you know, we we all teach ourselves that we're we.
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Maybe we're pretend that we're teaching ourselves how to be
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this like super innovation person.
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But the reality is that we need more people and their thinking
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to collide with our thinking and our limitations to go beyond
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what we could could have ever imagined.
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But you do that by sharing the thought process.
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You share where you imagine things can expand, and then
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someone else who hopefully has a bigger network and a bigger
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reach can then take the thinking.
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And put it inside their bigger connected space and then you
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have this interesting multiplier.
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But the multiplier isn't simple. So it's not 1 + 1 makes 11.
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Now it's gonna be more like 1 + 1 makes 110.
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It's like a you know it it's it's really evolving the the
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collaboration into mega exponential growth.
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It was an interesting time for us and it has been now you know,
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now that we've started to kick off the the work streams.
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But it also reminded me that a couple things.
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So limits occur within our our own mind space and then there's
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this other limitation which is the what maybe the market or
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the, the business practices say, right.
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So the business practices put labels like, oh, you're a zero
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to 1 startup or another one would be oh, you're in the
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scaling phase, so you're going 1 to 100.
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And so these phrased labels actually themselves.
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Unfortunately put limits on on our thinking and and that's
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actually not so good in the startup world.
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We often talk about 0 to one or zero to 100 when referring to
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how many staff a startup has at a certain stage of their
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development. We also expect a certain
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performance or revenue from a startup at a certain stage and
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we even give the startup names like Precede, Seed, Serious ABC
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or Growth Stage just to name a few.
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If you're a founder, you might have experienced that these
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labels seldomly match with where you stand because your
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development is actually dynamic. The right partner investor will
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understand that and will challenge your way of thinking
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to the very core and in every dimension.
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Early on, the right partner will avoid giving your development a
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label. According to Jason, even
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expecting certain deliverables from a startup at a certain
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stage can be a limitation by itself.
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So According to him, accountability for deliverables
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is good, but as an investor, you should go one step further and
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be the partner helping the startup reimagine their scope to
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then expand exponentially like this P/E Chairman who Jason met.
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Now let's listen how this broadened the scope of the
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solution of CFO AI in the Chinese market.
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Initially we were thinking more about the financial management
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and financial Wellness of the FMB and that is great.
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So we want to solve bankruptcy for the FMB.
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And one of the interesting things about that is that to be
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a better financially managed or financially stable restaurant,
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you need to have higher margin foods or increase the price
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point at which you operate. And what that really means is to
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increase the quality of food. So it has a very good, you know,
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social direction. In getting the F&B to be more
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financially successful, more healthy, quality of food for the
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customers and then you can even see like the third piece would
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be more carbon friendly. We did talk about expanding from
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the F&B space to like imagining health and Wellness and you
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know, could we create these many design features that work with
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the chef. But then could we start to
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imagine how we morph the OR how we inject?
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The incentives for a lower carbon footprint as well and so
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these were start, these triggered this, you know like
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that's when the size and the imagination of the P/E began to
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be, you know the mega billion and trillion level.
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Because we were starting to imagine how this could come
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together in within these AI systems that we're building now,
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what we're building. And what are the constraints or
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the details? So you start to see how the
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bigger becomes really mega big as I described some of these
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additional vectors. So the AI and all of that or the
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thinking and all of that will become things like a generative
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AI, right? So imagine if a chef says, well
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today I would like to imagine to put this pumpkin that I just
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bought at the wholesale market. How to create a new menu around
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pumpkin that's potentially going to be useful for diabetics or to
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help diabetics to retard the progress of diabetic
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deterioration. So the generative AI could be
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using our, you know, actual science, using our health
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management principles, along with many design for, you know,
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different types of cuisine, different types of fusion,
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different types of taste preferences.
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All crunched into one to create different suggestions for
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someone who is in charge of 100 restaurants or 2000 restaurants
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depending on the size of their operation.
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So this scale, Well, if you think of Shanghai as 100,000
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restaurants, you know the scale is potentially massive.
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And then China has 10s of millions of of food and beverage
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facilities as well. So, so you know we're basically
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creating like 1000 a thousand person company like in in these
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two years we will you know I will forget you know many, many
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people that I hired not because I we only have 150 capacity in
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our brain to to know people. So I'm going to meet people, but
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what's going to be interesting is that they become part of our
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family. So China does have this thought
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process that when you join a company, you know people look
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will look to me and the leadership team and our
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leadership team to be the ones that actually tell them how to
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grow their career. Now what that also means is that
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we feel a responsibility just like we were talking with my, by
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the way, my CEO and he's a PhD in strategic management, but
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he's Swedish. So again, don't don't confuse
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what I'm saying as a ethnically biased.
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It's really just this China thinking put into business.
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So we understand that's how people think here.
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They want to join a company and become part of the family and
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they want us to be responsible for certain pathways.
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The Chinese employee or just anyone, I mean anyone in the
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China realm is, is more attuned with the family oriented
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thinking where there is actually this responsibility, the shared
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responsibility for growth at the human level, growth, you know
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growth meaning our personal growth and that becomes embodied
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within the corporate growth. Whereas you know in comparison
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the, you know the Western thinking is again
22:13
individualistic KPI driven and potentially you, you often get
22:17
into these corporate silo conflicts, right.
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So one Senior VP wants to, I don't you know the story, right.
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So they they they want to be the one up over the other senior Vps
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to be the next President. This type of thinking is a
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little bit less so say within the the stuff that I see in
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China maybe people have different, you know, different
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experiences than me. So happy to also hear about
22:42
that. I asked Jason to help me better
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understand this and give me a more tangible example of what
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the Chinese family feeling and collective feeling actually is
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and why this is not in conflict with the harsh competition of
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individuals. So if you imagine how China
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attacked the Olympic Games, now of course that means that each
23:05
individual does have to pursue their individual excellence.
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But you when you hear those interviews of those athletes,
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you realize that they are a collective.
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You know they they feel that they're part of this China
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mission to to be this better country and perform on the on
23:21
the global stage. And so always keep in mind that,
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you know, from our training in the West, sometimes we project
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what we see in the behavior of someone because you know, we
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come from a context that it's hard for us to ignore.
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So we might project individualism when someone is
23:40
pursuing excellence. But what we don't really
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understand and feel is that much of that in the China realm is
23:48
actually part of the family, that the excellence is actually
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rooted in trying to be a more proud family.
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So even if you see a child is like, you know, achieving great
24:00
stuff, you know, my own wife, you know, she, she went to
24:03
Oxford University and the family is aglow with the fact that she
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had success at Oxford University.
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This is something that she shares very actively.
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She's not something that she's holding as an individual pride.
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It's a collective pride. So this is all part of that
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China story when they go into the workforce, when they imagine
24:27
businesses, when they imagine being successful.
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So it's a very different way. And so you have this interesting
24:33
interesting focus whereas what we see more even just talking
24:38
amongst ourselves that the executive team of my company, we
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are focused on a group KPI like we we don't think that it's
24:47
useful to manage to sort of unit KPIs.
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And so he brought up the point that in the world of Tesla using
24:56
Tesla as a, you know it's a hybrid of it's based here in
24:59
China as well, but it's obviously led by a Western
25:02
billionaire and obviously a genius.
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So they use this group KPI approach where people at any
25:09
level can call the leader of the Tesla group.
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I don't need to say the name and you know you can be part of a
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group KPI. You're basically everyone's
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trying to push for the same goal.
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There isn't a hierarchy of communication and there isn't a
25:24
silo versions of goals. I think this type of thinking is
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more aligned with what I've seen here in the China world, that
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there's a bigger focus on this societal KPI.
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What is the goal of society? Okay.
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So group KPIs and societal KPIs are important, but what does
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that mean for innovation and competition at a national level?
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How does this influence how we tackle innovation, and what are
25:53
the particular differences between Europe and China?
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Here's what Jason said. So there's differences, but
26:01
suspend judgment that those differences are in any way in
26:06
that space of one's better or one's worse.
26:10
So the first thing to know about China versus the West is I think
26:15
there is a focus on more corporate led.
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So if I just look at the West for a second, so there's
26:22
corporate led profit goals are often the focus of government.
26:28
So if you imagine Western governments, if they want to
26:31
solve a problem, or for example if we take the ESG and
26:35
sustainability and climate change as an example of a big
26:38
problem that does need innovation, The way that's being
26:42
tackled in the Western mind space is to work with the
26:44
corporates who can be incentivized through, let's say
26:48
carbon, carbon offset credits and so on to maybe change their
26:52
business models or change their products.
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So the West has this interesting approach to work with a few,
26:59
right. So the corporate, who are the
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corporate giants? I mean, it's a few people in
27:03
society. And of course they do control,
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they're big companies and they do have a connected community of
27:10
people. But really the decision makers
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are a few. Whereas if I look at the same
27:14
space in China, I see a different mindset.
27:17
I see people thinking about the problem more from the wider
27:21
population and the Chinese have wider reach in their technology
27:27
and tools. So you know, there's no other we
27:30
chat, there's only we chat, right?
27:32
There's only the China we chat. So now imagine it from the
27:35
central planner perspective. So the central planner has a
27:38
certain amount of resources and they want startup organizations
27:42
to bring that creativity and and to have this innovation approach
27:47
or innovative approach to improve the efficiencies across
27:51
the entire network. And the way this tends to work
27:55
in China is like a gamification of decentralization.
27:58
So each, all the players, each each company is often identified
28:04
by the networking elite. So the networking elite
28:08
understand who are actually competing.
28:10
You know, it could be like Hefei province is considered a
28:13
province that is a startup mindset.
28:15
So it's like a province that's competing with the other
28:17
provinces to attract certain types of technological
28:21
advancement. And when they have something or
28:24
they feel that they have something, they propose it to
28:26
the central team. And it's like a pitch
28:29
competition. But the qualification for the
28:32
pitch competition is actually not capitalistic, as you might
28:35
imagine. It's more about how much is this
28:39
particular methodology, whatever technology and methodology is
28:42
being proposed is going to then also uplift something in the
28:47
societal realm. So there's an interesting
28:51
scoring system. So I'll give you the analogy
28:53
because it's something that we're working on or trying to
28:56
imagine in the education space. If your company is trying to
29:00
pitch an innovation and become, I know to enter the university
29:04
of innovation, let's say the same qualifications happen.
29:08
You have to be strong technologically.
29:11
Your solution is strong. You have to be doing some, you
29:14
know, extra critical activity. You know your team is always
29:18
sharing its wisdom. And then you have this third
29:20
piece, which is your footprint. Your societal footprint has to
29:24
be something super positive. It's hard to say how these
29:27
weights, these three items are scored to get funding in China,
29:33
but if you're coming from Germany, it's good to know that
29:36
that actually is, roughly speaking, how it actually works.
29:39
So if you know that's how it works, then you need to
29:42
communicate how you see each of these pieces and how you and
29:47
your team embody that in your culture and in your product and
29:51
your service, in your your technical excellence.
29:54
And that is a different thinking.
29:56
Honestly, that is a different thinking.
29:58
Tesla does it super well. I mean, this is not the only
30:02
Chinese companies can do it. It's just that you have to
30:05
embody the thinking first, or you embrace the thinking 1st and
30:09
then build your communication and build the way you see your
30:11
company. And then the opportunities will
30:14
come because you have the right mission.
30:16
You have the right vision and the right mission.
30:19
So the mindset of being a family of smart individuals working
30:22
towards individual excellence while understanding the success
30:26
as a family or company pride is 1 important factor.
30:30
Embodying societal good in your strategy and aligning everyone
30:33
on working towards the societal good is the second important
30:37
factor. In China, this seems to be the
30:40
alignment with government goals and the practice of
30:42
incentivizing people via gamification.
30:45
But how does the very nature of how we as innovators approach
30:49
bigger challenges, like, let's say, climate change or so
30:52
differ? So I recently did a visit to
30:56
Canada, where I do have a home and my son, my son lives there.
31:02
And the imagination that I see in talking to some of the
31:04
executives there, very limited. I was shocked, actually.
31:10
The thinking that I saw was more of a doubling down on the
31:14
technologies that they already have.
31:15
So if you they have these interesting community reach or
31:20
community gamification programs, they want to double down and
31:25
maybe improve its reach 10%, grow 10%.
31:30
So they're thinking in the channeled way or siloed way in a
31:35
box that they already created. And whereas China is developing,
31:40
I mean these massive programs of technology where the reach is so
31:44
much more that the way that those people, when I'm here in
31:49
Shanghai and Beijing and I'm just imagining things with
31:52
people, the programs that we're talking about are way more
31:56
comprehensive. Most Western incentive programs
31:59
are line of business silo focus. So you know you've got the
32:04
Senior VP. His KPI is to meet some bottom
32:09
line profit and if he gets it then of course he will take 50%
32:14
of that and then trickle down to his minions or his staff.
32:20
Jason again stresses China's big technology platforms.
32:23
Here we chat and Alipay just being 2 examples.
32:26
To give you a bit of background, what's unique about China in
32:29
this regard is that it's probably the only place globally
32:33
where you have access to massive tools, being big platforms with
32:36
hundreds and thousands of everyday services.
32:39
Meaning that you as an individual have the great
32:41
incentive to use this one platform in your everyday life
32:45
because you have considerable advantages from it.
32:48
As an example, imagine you first take the subway, then rent and
32:52
use a shared bike on the street to ride to your favorite
32:54
restaurant. You have a yummy lunch there
32:56
with a good friend and the best thing is because this is all
32:59
happening, we have this one platform that you get credits
33:02
for it, which can then be used to buy yourself a cup of coffee
33:05
at your favorite coffee shop in Europe.
33:08
We also have been trying to build similar incentive and
33:11
reward systems to make people take environmental friendly
33:14
transport or make them use reusable packaging for take away
33:17
food. But many of these solutions have
33:20
failed because they were not integrated enough.
33:23
And the user ended up using multiple apps which could not be
33:26
combined. So incentive systems are working
33:29
and have been working differently in Europe and China.
33:32
And I personally would go as far as saying that they are working
33:35
better in China. And that opens up a big scope
33:38
for integrating gamification and societal good into a startup's
33:42
entrepreneurial journey. Allows a different type of
33:46
thinking. This is possible.
33:48
We can incentivize people to gamify this carbon footprint
33:55
journey for billions of people through through WeChat for
33:58
example, or through even the the Alibaba Group of companies and
34:02
then there's metwanandjd.com. And so there's so many of these
34:06
wide reaching technologies. So we, we know that educators
34:11
often use a very strong academic record as a decision making tool
34:16
for candidates for say Yale University or you know, Stanford
34:21
and so on. And they've over time started to
34:24
use other things like extracurricular activity, like
34:27
how much volunteer work is the child doing in their local
34:31
community. And so that's great.
34:33
And now what we're seeing or what we're encouraging and what
34:38
you know we're having these discussions, very interesting
34:40
discussions is can we also have as a vector in that application
34:45
the carbon footprint. So it's a very interesting way
34:48
of thinking. Again, this is coming from the
34:50
way Chinese, you know how let's say we as entrepreneurs in China
34:55
or we as innovators in China think.
34:57
So if you can imagine the individual pursuit is a yes, on
35:02
the one hand it's going to be your academic record, but one of
35:04
the qualifications to get to the next level is going to be how
35:07
you imagine your footprint with your family, you know within
35:11
your communal existence. That is also part of the
35:15
qualification. So this is also happening at
35:18
the, this is the educational, you know, the 18 year old, 19
35:21
year old, 20 year old, this same type of thinking is happening at
35:24
the business level. And then you overlay recently
35:28
the development of CBDC. So there's a central bank
35:32
digital currency, which is the digital R&B exactly.
35:37
So it's another technology that now brings the incentive
35:40
component, but it's also programmable.
35:42
So you can imagine that the carbon footprint arena at the
35:47
community level can be gamified and then incentivize with
35:53
programmable money where that money can only be used for
35:57
certain societal good. So if you are, you know your
36:00
family unit is practicing a good carbon footprint.
36:04
Maybe your grandchildren or your children get this CBDC for
36:09
buying or paying for university. And that programmable means that
36:15
it can only be used for university and it can only be
36:18
used for university at a certain time period.
36:21
So we've learned about gamification approaches and
36:24
education, and regarding the current footprints.
36:26
But Jason also spoke about healthy nutrition, which
36:30
According to him. Is becoming more and more
36:33
important in China. Jason is using a very cool
36:36
analogy here. So in China, as you know, in the
36:41
subway, we have these panels that are the barrier between the
36:45
train and the platform. In Canada, there's none, There
36:50
are no barriers. So there's many a lot of
36:53
suicides happen in the subway network in Canada.
36:57
Now one of the areas that's the type of thinking that happens in
37:00
China that there's the government is responsible for
37:04
preventing certain like bad stuff.
37:07
And so in in the train systems that's more presents itself as a
37:13
tangible barrier between the platform and the train.
37:17
Food has become the recent sphere that the government
37:22
believes that they are now more responsible because what we've
37:26
seen in the way people eat as China has become more wealthy is
37:32
an overconsumption that is not healthy.
37:35
It's an overconsumption that is maybe driven by a a prior
37:40
period, you know, famine or scarcity.
37:45
So there's overeating that's happening at a psychological
37:47
level to to show abundance, to show that you know the family
37:51
unit is is prosperous and you have a decline in many of the
37:57
health metrics to the point where it's alarming the level of
38:01
cancer, the level of diabetes, the level of heart disease.
38:05
So the China state has started to own this responsibility.
38:11
And So what you will see is because they they are, if you
38:15
imagine this is messaging that you see in the daily China Daily
38:21
and you can pick any, any day of the week, there will be many
38:23
articles on on healthy eating. So it's a sphere that data
38:28
awareness in this sphere will become more accessible I predict
38:35
because it's now moving into the realm of the state.
38:39
It's something that the state believes.
38:41
It's my responsibility to put the barrier between where you're
38:45
standing and the potential Cliff of an oncoming train.
38:50
And that oncoming train could be, you know, hard.
38:52
Like, unfortunately, my my aunt died at a restaurant.
38:55
Like she, she died of a stroke at a restaurant.
38:58
That's the type of thing that can happen when you're not aware
39:02
of the healthy choices or unhealthy choices that one
39:06
makes. I notice when I go to Canada,
39:08
you know, every week there's at least one person that's
39:11
committing suicide on the train. Now, that hasn't changed.
39:15
The government, like, the government doesn't put any
39:17
barriers up. Like it's like a, you know, we
39:19
live in this strange world where the government in Canada anyway
39:23
doesn't want to take responsibility.
39:25
It believes that the liberal society will figure it out.
39:28
I mean, I don't know. I think this that's a choice
39:31
where it's not about political ideology.
39:34
It's now more about the human experience, you know, our lived
39:39
experiences, some people to feel to kill themselves, you know, we
39:43
should be mindful of that. So food is an interesting area
39:47
where that's happening. So many people who experience
39:52
let's say food related chronic illness like gout is a is a good
39:56
example. They know that they they food is
39:59
the reason but they still you know they they're caught in the
40:03
it's not an addiction it's more like a societal norm that we
40:07
have to eat in excess whenever we have you know these
40:10
celebrations in China, the Spring festival, the, you know
40:14
the the Autumn festival and so on.
40:17
This overtime will have to change because it used to be
40:22
with scarcity, only the festival time, you ate meat.
40:26
So it's actually OK to eat in excess meat at the festival
40:30
time. But because now we're more
40:32
wealthy, we're eating, we're just eating in abundance all the
40:37
time and then even more abundance at the spring festival
40:41
time. Very dangerous.
40:43
The longevity that we're seeing is not because people are
40:46
actually healthy. It's just because the medical
40:48
services are better or the food is more, it's packed with more
40:53
nutrition, but the disease is higher.
40:56
So people are living less healthy, longer lives in China
41:02
and that overall is not so good, particularly with demographic
41:05
decrease about the population decline about to happen in a
41:10
mass way in China. So the government is taking
41:13
control in this area. They will come in to imagine
41:16
this in a different way, with the help of course, innovators
41:19
like myself in a way that would look like state controlled
41:24
innovation, very different mind space than the West.
41:28
But it's a belief structure that the family unit ethos is driving
41:33
this. You know, we need to protect the
41:34
family. The person doesn't know how to
41:36
control themselves when they eat.
41:39
Our society has changed the boundaries of eating
41:42
uncomfortably. So and the state has to, you
41:45
know, the smarter people. The planner, right, the central
41:48
planner has to help. Of course we should do it in a
41:51
kind way and in a data privacy way and like all the things that
41:54
we talked about. But this is an area where I
41:56
think you can start to imagine will be different than what we
42:00
see in the West. Or the way the West approaches
42:04
risk management is different than the way China approaches
42:07
risk management? This was my interview with
42:12
Jason, which I find was very insightful and also makes one
42:16
very curious to try out many things that Jason talked about.
42:20
It was a long interview and we tackled so many topics.
42:24
Let me sum up the key takeaways and conclusions.
42:27
One constant collaboration is key for a startup.
42:31
Even with people who you think to be out of your scope of
42:34
interest because you're too selective, you might end up
42:38
imagining your business far smaller and less disruptive than
42:42
it could be too. Investors, be it VCs or private
42:46
equity firms, can play a significant role in reimagining
42:50
your. Business and taking it to the
42:52
next level. But this level can only be
42:55
maximal if we stop using labels like 0 to one or seed growth
42:59
stage, etcetera, because these labels are limitation by
43:03
themselves and they can prevent us from thinking big enough 3.
43:08
Implementing new company cultures that are based on
43:11
individual excellence but perceived success as a family or
43:15
group pride could help you boost your company's performance.
43:20
Always remember that the personal growth of your
43:22
employees is not only a nice to have, but is rather your core
43:26
responsibility as a founder. If you want to obtain mega
43:29
results for building a multinational heterogeneous
43:34
team, increases the likelihoods that you have people on the team
43:37
that have no biases and innovate more openly and last but not
43:42
least. Incentivizing your customers and
43:45
community via gamification to work with you on societal good.
43:49
Be it carbon footprint or health, eating or others should
43:53
be something you implement from the bare start because it can
43:56
open up new monetization paths and it can make the difference
44:00
between being a high scaler or even mega scaler.
44:04
This was the new episode of the German Innovators China Beats
44:08
podcast. We are here to support you.
44:11
Tune in again next time and reach out via LinkedIn.
44:14
You'll find the link in the show notes, and I'm looking forward
44:17
to having you again next time.